Opinion page editor Rick Holmes and other writers blog about national politics and issues. Holmes & Co. is a Blog for Independent Minds, a place for a free-flowing discussion of policy, news and opinion. This blog is the online cousin of the Opinion
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Opinion page editor Rick Holmes and other writers blog about national politics and issues. Holmes & Co. is a Blog for Independent Minds, a place for a free-flowing discussion of policy, news and opinion. This blog is the online cousin of the Opinion section of the MetroWest Daily News in Framingham, Mass. As such, our focus starts there and spreads to include Massachusetts, the nation and the world. Since successful blogs create communities of readers and writers, we hope the \x34& Co.\x34 will also come to include you.

It really came as no surprise to me that implementation of key elements of Obamatax are going to be deferred until 2015. Those of us working with clients who need to comply with Obamatax have seen the complete impossibility of doing what the law says that business needs to do. Here in Massachusetts, we have been wrestling with a much more fundamental problem–the glaring incompatibility of Obamatax and Romneycare, and no one even seems able to say whether Obamatax pre empts Romneycare or whether Massachusetts is a waiver state. If this issue isn’t resolved, Massachusetts businesses will either face years in Court, or we’ll see an absolute out migration by 2016 of our largest employers seeking some kind of business certainty. What is clear is that Obamatax was poorly thought out, poorly conceived and can’t be implemented, and it needs more than just a fix. What is needs is outright repeal, and a return to the drawing board. Obama needs to admit this, and he needs to figure out how to work with Congress and the Senate to make this happen. If he won’t, the 2014 election will become a referendum on Obamatax again. With all other social, political and economic issues taking a back seat, and in light of the increasing corruption, slime, sleaze, unconstitutionality, criminality and outright arrogance, not to mention high crimes and misdemeanors, which now defines the Obama legacy (and which makes it clear that the Egyptians are better democrats than we are), Obama had better figure out how to save his “signature” policy if he wants to have any legacy other than America’s war criminal in chief.